Craig James Is on Trial. MLAs Are Too

The legal chickens are finally coming home to roost in the B.C. legislature scandal, with the trial of former clerk of the legislature Craig James now underway.

James is facing charges of breach of trust and fraud arising from two separate inquiries into improper spending and conduct at the B.C. legislature.

Those inquiries, conducted by former Speaker Darryl Plecas and former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverley McLachlin, set out a number of instances of apparently excessive and improper spending, ranging from cufflinks and suits to six-figure retirement bonuses and, of course, the infamous wood splitter.

Public outrage was immediate, as were demands that something be done to prevent this from ever happening again.

Politicians from all parties were quick to promise action. They had good reason for doing so, since they were all represented on the Legislative Assembly Management Committee, which was supposed to be overseeing the administration of the legislature while all this was going on.

This Wednesday marks the third anniversary of a letter to the Legislative Assembly Management Committee from the Information and Privacy Commissioner, the Merit Commissioner and the ombudsperson, who jointly proposed reforms.

“The Legislative Assembly is in many respects a public institution like any other,” they wrote. “It employs people, owns property and provides services. It spends taxpayer dollars in doing so. When it discharges these functions there is no policy reason to exempt it from accountability and transparency rules that apply to other public institutions.”

They made three recommendations:

• Revise the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act so that it applies to the Legislative Assembly. This would only apply to the administration of the legislature, not the political or constituency work of MLAs.


• Amend B.C.’s Public Interest Disclosure Act, which protects whistleblowers, to have it apply to the Legislative Assembly so employees can report wrongdoing and are protected from reprisal for doing so.


• Revise the Public Service Act to provide the Merit Commissioner the mandate to conduct an independent audit of staffing appointments within the administration of the Legislative Assembly.

So what was the reaction of the political parties?

All three government House leaders — BC Liberals, Greens and NDP — were quick to accept the recommendations.

This is what Government House Leader Mike Farnworth had to say. “I think they’re very positive recommendations. I think they’re very helpful and it’s our intention to implement the recommendations.”

Mary Polak was the Liberal House leader. She said it was a “step in the right direction.”

“It’s important to have the FOI legislation, but I think we need to go further,” she added.

The Greens are also on the Legislative Assembly Management Committee. Here is what their then-leader Andrew Weaver had to say. “I would suggest to them this is just a beginning of many more changes that should occur.”

So with all three parties apparently ready, willing and able to make these changes you would expect that these change would have happened almost immediately.

But you would be wrong. Nothing has happened with any of the recommendations.

On the freedom of information front, last fall the government thought it was vital that major changes be made to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and brought in Bill 22. That bill amended the act to allow public bodies to charge for information requests, removed cabinet from the act and made a number of other changes, many of which undercut information rights.

Somehow, the government forgot about its promise to include the legislature under the act. It rammed its preferred changes through using time allocation, using its majority to pass the bill over the objections of both opposition parties and the Information and Privacy Commissioner, as well as a large number of civil society organizations and First Nations.

One of the objections to Bill 22 was its timing. By ramming these amendments through the legislature during the fall sitting, the government was undermining the work of a Special Committee of the Legislature whose task is to review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

Coincidentally, that committee has just opened its public consultation on the act.

So if you think it’s important to remind the politicians of what they promised to do to prevent future wood splitter purchases from happening, this is your chance to do it.

Who knows, it might even push them to do something about the other two recommendations.